Ice
by eleventhirty
Summary: Frank's thoughts on losing a patient.    Formerly posted here as "Crimson and Clover"


_I don't own MASH and don't claim to. _

_Enjoy!_

_~eleventhirty_

Rain falls lightly outside the operating room, yet no one currently present will have the opportunity to feel it against their skin. There are wounded tonight - an endless stream of nameless men barely clinging to life. Inside the OR, red blood flows from the injured with the same sickening regularity as the water outside. The scent of it hangs heavy in the air, thick and metallic.

Three of the surgeons move with clockwork precision, doing what they can for the boys in their care, yet ultimately aware that the more spend they time with one patient, the less another has. It's a sick balancing act, yet it is one that must be mastered. The pace is so frenzied that no one pays any mind to the fourth man, staring down at the motionless form that had once been a living person. This surgeon's blue eyes are twin orbs of ice perched inside his skull, just as cold...just as emotionless. He cannot move...he cannot speak. The boy's blood is everywhere...on the table...on the instruments that had failed to prevent the inevitable...

On the hands of the surgeon.

He glances down dispassionately at his gloved hands. Once pristine white latex is forever stained crimson with the life essence of a young man who should have been thousands of miles away from this hell. A smear of blood dries upon the surgeon's brow, yet he does not posses the strength to even wipe it away. This surgeon wonders, with sick curiosity, if the blood of this fallen soldier will eventually seep into his own skin; the blood of the dead mixing with that of the living. It must be. If that can be the case, perhaps then this boy...this man child might not actually be gone.

"Uh...Major?" One of the nurses looks at him with barely masked curiosity. "Is everything all right?"

He closes his eyes for a moment.

Breathe.

In and out.

He can get through this.

His hands shake as he pulls a sheet over the forever still soldier. "Just peachy!" He snaps, although these words feel as though they fall flat upon his lips. As he's done so many times in the past, he'll hide his pain behind his mask of contempt. The nurse shakes her head, and motions for a corpsman to take the boy away. He looks away quickly, polishing the crimson stains off of his instruments in order to avoid seeing the fallen young man getting carried out of the world of the living. Across the room, Hawkeye notices this sick procession of death, and turns accusing blue eyes to the perceived culprit. The surgeon cannot see Hawkeye's face under the white cotton of his mask, but his eyes scream volumes of hatred. He clearly blames the other man for taking this boy away before his time.

"Major Burns?" Col. Potter glances briefly over his patient to the shadowed eyes of his surgeon. "Do you need a minute?"

Before he can answer, Hawkeye laughs briefly; harsh and terrible. "Yes Frank, why don't you go away for a while? Maybe that way these kids can have a chance at surviving."

He remains silent. Had anyone else have been in the hellish situation of losing a patient, such a comment would have been in the worst possible taste. There were things that were not necessarily all right to joke about, but still fair game. Death was not one of them.

But since it was Frank, no one cared.

Potter shoots Hawkeye a warning glare, but the chief surgeon's attention is once again focused on his patient. "Well Frank?"

He shakes his head. Major Houlihan appears behind him, and begins to wordlessly peel off his blood stained gloves. He's almost surprised to see his skin, seeing as the pale flesh is not stained red. She offers no words, but her eyes shine with the sparkle of unshed tears.

These will never fall. Not in the operating room.

The surgeon turns his attention to the new boy, stretched out before him on the table like a lamb waiting to be sacrificed. He's gurgles softly, bringing fresh crimson blood cascading down his translucent cheeks.

His lips clench tightly behind the white cotton of his mask. One more. Just one more. If he can save just this one boy, maybe that will be the end. Maybe in prolonging just this one life, he'll gain some insight into this chaos.

His hands tremble as he reaches for the scalpel.


End file.
